Beauty queen shot dead after octopus ceviche order led killers to restaurant
An Ecuadorian beauty queen was assassinated after her Instagram post of a plate of octopus ceviche led gunmen to the restaurant where she was dining.
Police are investigating the shooting of 23-year-old Landy Párraga amid media speculation the hit was ordered by the widow of a drug lord with whom she is believed to have had an affair.
The beauty queen and social media influencer was gunned down shortly after her name appeared in a corruption inquiry linking judicial officials to organised crime.
Párraga had just posted a photo of the ceviche she was about to eat for lunch to her 173,000 followers on Instagram when two armed men burst into the restaurant in Quevedo and fired several times at her.
The restaurant’s CCTV captured Párraga coming under fire. She was reportedly shot three times and died shortly after.
Párraga, who took fifth place in the 2022 edition of Miss Ecuador, is said to have been the lover of Leandro Norero, a married drug trafficker who was killed in a prison riot 18 months ago.
Investigators found photos of the beauty queen and evidence of the lavish gifts he gave her, including apartments and cars, on Norero’s phone after his death.
“If my wife comes across anything about her, I’m screwed,” Norero had said of Párraga to an alleged criminal associate, Helive Ángulo.
He added: “My friend, her name cannot come out anywhere. Otherwise, my world will come crashing down.”
Mr Ángulo is one of some 50 people being prosecuted as a result of Operation Metastasis, the investigation into a criminal network accused of corrupting Ecuadorian state officials.
Among those charged are judges accused of granting gang leaders favourable rulings, police officials suspected of tampering with evidence and delivering weapons to prisons, and the former director of Ecuador’s prison authority, who is accused of giving special treatment to a powerful drug trafficker.
The corruption case burst into the open last December with dozens of arrests, just weeks before Ecuador experienced an explosion of violence as gangs took scores of prison guards and police officers hostage.
President Daniel Noboa, who took office in November, responded by using emergency powers and sending in the military to deal with some 22 gangs the government has declared to be terrorist organisations.
Norero’s widow, Lina Romero, is accused of attempting to bribe judges and prosecutors and, according to Ecuadorian newspaper El Comercio, police are investigating whether Párraga laundered money for Norero.
The influencer, who amassed more than a million followers on TikTok, owned a sports clothing label and a goods-importing business, which the authorities suspect may have been a front for some of Norero’s illicit activities.
Known as “el Patron” (the Boss), Norero had a long history of gang violence and drug trafficking when he was arrested in May 2022. In the operation, police seized several bars of gold bullion and $7 million in cash as well as firearms.
Norero had previously faked his death to evade the authorities, being certified as having succumbed to Covid-19 during the pandemic. In late 2022, the authorities said Norero had been killed in prison, although his body – badly burnt in a fire caused by the riot – was never identified.
According to the Spanish newspaper El País, President Noboa’s administration introduced a system of taking DNA samples from all prisoners for identification. But the authorities have now reportedly stopped this for fear the samples could be used to implicate prisoners in other crimes.
